With the reelection of Pres. Olusegun Obasanjo in April 2003, Nigeria saw its first civilian transition of power since the country achieved independence in 1960. The polling for the presidential election was generally peaceful, despite fears of violence fueled by the March killing of Marshall Harry, one of Obasanjo’s rivals. (In April Nigerian police determined that Marshall’s murder was not a political assassination.) Numerous sources cited inconsistencies in the results of certain polling districts; however, European Union monitors later conceded that the end result was likely accurate. The main opposition candidate, former military leader Muhammadu Buhari, called the election “a joke” and immediately petitioned the Court of Appeal to nullify the results. Legal wrangling over the election continued throughout the rest of the year. President Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) also gained eight governorships in the April elections. The only state lost by the PDP was the northern state of Kano, which, as per the general political trend in the north, elected a governor more willing to enforce Islamic Shariʿah law.

At the outset of his second term, Obasanjo reduced petroleum subsidies, which led to a 54% rise in fuel prices for ordinary citizens. Trade unions responded with a general strike, crippling commerce in urban areas. The strike lasted nine days, until the government agreed to reduce the amount of the subsidy cut.

The increasing role of conservative Islam in northern Nigerian politics continued to spawn controversy in 2003. In September governments and human rights organizations welcomed the news that Amina Lawal, a woman convicted of adultery in a Shariʿah court in 2002 and sentenced to death by stoning, had been acquitted by a court of appeals. In October three northern states halted a World Health Organization polio vaccination drive on the advice of influential Muslims. Some religious leaders claimed that vaccines from Western nations might be used to kill or sterilize Nigeria’s Muslim population. The Nigerian government had the vaccine analyzed in November by a committee within the country and thereby set the stage for the resumption of inoculations.

Nigeria’s oil industry continued to be the centre of strife in 2003. The oil-rich Niger Delta region, a site of much turmoil since the mid-1990s, erupted into violence in the weeks before the April elections and again in August. The deadly clashes involved militias of Ijo and Itsekiri ethnic communities as well as Nigerian navy forces. Ijo youths targeted Itsekiri communities and petroleum industry installations in support of their struggle to obtain greater political representation. The Nigerian military intervened to restore calm and protect the region’s oil interests. Certain armed groups targeted oil facilities directly, rupturing a major pipeline with explosives in April. Because of the violence, ChevronTexaco and Shell were forced to cut production dramatically in late March, which contributed to a worldwide rise in oil prices. In April striking oil workers held 97 American and British workers, along with 170 Nigerian workers, on offshore oil rigs for nearly two weeks. In June an accidental pipeline explosion in the state of Abia took the lives of more than 100 residents.

In August Nigerian peacekeeping troops took to the streets of Monrovia, Liberia, to enforce a cease-fire in the civil war in that country. On August 11 Liberian Pres. Charles Taylor went into exile in the southern Nigerian city of Calabar, effectively ending the three-year-old Liberian civil war. In September and October the Nigerian government issued Taylor warnings amid allegations that he was ignoring the conditions of his asylum by remaining in contact with Liberian politicians. Meanwhile, Nigeria rejected UN and Interpol calls for the arrest of Taylor on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On September 27 Nigeria became the first sub-Saharan African nation after South Africa to have its own satellite in orbit. Developed for the purpose of monitoring regional disasters, NigeriaSat-1 was built by 15 Nigerian engineers, with technical input from Surrey Satellite Technology in England.